October 20, 2008

It’s that time for another uncommon SEO tip you can employ the next time you are considering building links to develop rankings and website authority.

There is a reason why there is a WWW in front of your domain address, an opportunity to reach, network and share your thoughts and businesses around the world with International SEO. Think local, act global (in context to SEO) can now be taken literally.

What is an authority site? Website authority is a by-product of multiple factors (trust rank, relevance and endorsement from websites who have earned a position of authority from search engines).

In layman’s terms, it is a popular site that people frequent, that gets linked to on the basis of it’s merit, or that others willingly refer to when the topic of that site comes into play.

As a result, if you are looking for a great source for inbound links, you can always tap into search engines to find relevant sites in other countries that you can approach to find viable alternative to your competition on common soil.

One link from an authority site can be equal to 1000 off topic links. Since relevance is one of the key metrics search engines use to determine how much value the link passes, think outside the box, or at least outside the country to find other sites that have attained authority status.

Traffic comes from uncommon sources, for example our blog has readers in over 127 countries who frequent regularly. There isn’t a day that goes by that we are not getting linked to as a reference for something SEO related from Russia, Italy, India, the UK, Canada, Australia, Spain or dozens of other countries.

The key to this strategy is to create link-worthy content (before you embark on an SEO campaign), then look for new ways to emulate local or national SEO strategies abroad (a great plug in for FireFox exists from Red Fly Marketing for this purpose called Google Global). Other countries outside the USA have social bookmarking sites such as those you will find on the attached list, or you can use search operators like these in Google or Google Blog Search, from the international search engine location.

Also, another tactic is to look for link opportunities from the top down, much like going to DMOZ to find sites that have made the grade and passed human inspection, you can also seek out International Search Engines or International Directories with clout to find the sites that have a degree of website authority.

The strategy is not limited to websites, resources or directories, you can also take your RSS feed international as well. Or use similar strategies to jet set without leaving the comfort of your computer when looking for other uncommon International SEO link building opportunities.

Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

The challenge is knowing what is acceptable on an international level. Kudos to those who’ve managed to capture an international audience. It’s however, an uphill battle for blogers who still struggle to capture a local audience.

I really like this article and the whole set of international link building tactics. In my experience, though, there’s a problem with trying to link with sites in other countries: Many times they feel like links are only valuable if the business is local to them. In terms of SEO, that’s not the case, obviously, but a lot of webmasters in other countries feel that way regardless.